Torah specials!

As do all blessings, the bracha we recite before learning sacred text or topics begins with praise of Adonai our God. We then offer thanks for the opportunity to engage with words or teachings of Torah: la’asok b’divrei Torah, a text I translate loosely as getting down to business / busy-ness with Torah. (The root of la’asok means to be occupied with .…)

Like clockwork, several times a year my email inbox fills with donation solicitations from a wide range of Jewish concerns: Help us meet our new year goal (Rosh Hashana); think of the homeless (Sukkot); don’t let the lights go out (Hanukka); remember those who go hungry (Pesach).

Alas, poor Shavuot, that orphan of the regalim (the three major Torah pilgrimage festivals). It had not inspired either donation requests or sale offers on foods or stuff.

Friends, those days are history! Yesterday, for the first time, an email arrived with a pitch centered on SHAVUOT! Sofer on Site is an outfit that checks, repairs and sells Torah scrolls; they will even write a new one as a fundraising project for synagogue or school. The announcement trumpeted — HUGE SHAVUOT TORAH SALE: New and pre-owned Torah scrolls! Same day delivery! Call now for the best selection!

Prices start at $7,000 for a pre-owned Torah scroll; $30,000 for a new one. I get that a used Torah could be acquired for only $7,000. But a new one for only $30,000?

I have it on good authority that a new scroll of decent quality should cost at least double that. It’s a nearly year-long project, the calfskin (parchment) on which it is written is not inexpensive, and even a scribal apprentice or journeyman has to earn enough to eat, pay the rent and, likely, help support a family.

However, those details weren’t what initially caught my eye; it was the idea of Torahs on special sale for Shavuot! Order now! Operators are standing by.

Perhaps my reaction to the novelty of a Shavuot sale by by a purveyor of scrolls is because it implies that one might need a new or replacement scroll NOW!

Or, was I so struck by the pitch because it focused on what may be simultaneiously the most important thing that we have and the least important: the physical scroll itself.

On the one hand, historically, very small scrolls were commissioned so they could be easily transported if/when the Jews were forced to move. Second to human life, the scrolls are to be protected at all costs in the face of a catastrophe.

On the other hand, Shavuot, a biblical agricultural festival, has become a celebration of the contents of those scrolls — the laws, the legends, the lore that continue to be examined, explicated and elucidated on many levels and from many different perspectives. The physical scroll is only the beginning; the text is the seed of what we are as Jews. I suppose we have to start somewhere, so a sale on scrolls might be just the right thing for Shavuot.

This Shavuot, I hope you will join us for the Psalm Pslam (plus!), an opportunity to delve into some aspects of our sacred literary saga that extends way beyond Torah, the first five books. And if not with us, find somewhere else, or just sit with a friend, to consider some of what we can learn from the foundational saga of Torah, from the histories and pronouncements in Prophets, from the wide-ranging texts of the Writings.

The word “torah” encompasses vastly more than the first five books of the Tanach, the Hebrew bible. As the sage Ben Bag Bag says in Pirkei Avot, Teachings of Our Ancestors, “hafoch bah vahafoch bah d’kula bah / turn it over and over, for everything is in it.” No one has time to uncover everything that is in our sacred texts; take some time on Shavuot to turn or pore over even just a few pages. You’ll discover some of the joy and challenge of what it means to la’asok b’divrei Torah, to engage with words, with ideas and with teachings of Torah.

chag sameiach!